The new novel from Richard Francis, the acclaimed author of Taking Apart the Poco Poco, is a bittersweet portrait of the Willis family, who live in a small terraced house in 1940s Stockport. Fat Hen is a novel about the inner and outer lives we create for ourselves and how they impinge on each other, sometimes even without our realising it. It's Stockport, 1948, and an ordinary family, Rose and Jack Willis, their son Donald, and Rose's father Ernie, are living apparently uneventful existences in a small terraced house. Things are not what they seem. While moving a piano Jack makes a discovery...

Usually told from the perspective of the victims, the Salem Witch Trials are a forever story. The vestiges of a particular strain of American social hysteria remain with us even today. In Crane Pond, Richard Francis reveals a side of the history that is not often recounted, as he skillfully constructs a portrait of Samuel Sewall, the only judge to later admit that a terrible mistake had been made.
In a colony on the edge of survival in a mysterious new world where infant mortality is high and sin is to blame, Sweall is committed to being a loving family man, a good citizen, and a...